Tag: astrophotography

Lunar Eclipse—03 March 2026

A total lunar eclipse occurred on March 3, 2026, and was visible across North America. Fortunately, the skies were clear over northern Arizona allowing us to watch the entire event. The timing wasn’t optimal as it occurred in the early morning hours before sunrise. On the other hand, the timing kept the crowds away.

A composite of five images during the total lunar eclipse of March 03, 2026. The circle marks the size of Earth's umbral shadow.
A composite of five images during the total lunar eclipse of March 03, 2026. The circle marks the size of Earth’s umbral shadow.
Schematic of the different phases and times during the total lunar eclipse. The image is rotated 90°.
Schematic of the different phases and times during the total lunar eclipse. The image is rotated 90°.

From Wikipedia:

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon moves into the Earth’s shadow, causing the Moon to be darkened. A total lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon’s near side entirely passes into the Earth’s umbral shadow. A lunar eclipse may be viewed from anywhere on the night side of Earth. A total lunar eclipse can last up to nearly two hours…

I decided to photograph the eclipse using a star tracker so that the camera would follow the stars across the sky as the event unfolded. Because the Moon is moving from west-to-east as it moves around Earth the lunar disk would move across the image. After the event, I could stack multiple images showing the different phases of the eclipse and the Moon’s location relative to the umbral shadow.

The next total lunar eclipse visible from Arizona will occur June 25, 202–but the eclipse will already be in progress when the Moon rises above the eastern horizon. Maximum totality should be visible although it will still be Nautical Twilight and the eastern sky should be dark enough to see the lunar disk. A good idea for the 2029 eclipse will be line up the Moon with some interesting foregrounds. I think I have plenty of time to plan this.

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon)–October 2025

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Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) from Sedona on 24 October 2025.

I have enjoyed several evenings (and one early morning) viewing and photographing Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon). My first sighting was the morning of 06 October 2025. By mid-October the comet had moved enough that it was visible in the evening sky.

From the Wikipedia entry for the comet:

C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) approached Earth at a distance of 0.60 AU (90 million km; 56 million mi) on 21 October 2025. It reached an apparent magnitude of 3.5 to 4.4 according to different estimates, indicating that it could be visible to the naked eye from sufficiently dark skies. During its closest approach the comet was visible in the sunset sky with a solar elongation of 42 degrees.

Here are some images and time-lapse videos of the comet.

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) in the pre dawn hours on 06 October 2025.
Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) in the pre dawn hours on 06 October 2025.

A time-lapse video of the comet on the same morning shows how quickly the comet moves against the background of stars in a period of one hour.

Viewing the comet in the evening was much easier.

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) in the evening hours (85 mm; 18 October 2025).
Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) in the evening hours (85 mm; 18 October 2025).

Time-lapse video of the motion of the comet (18 October 2025).

The following night I switched lenses to a medium telephoto (180mm) and was able to resolve a lot of detail in the tail of the comet.

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon ) on 19 October 2025.
Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon ) on 19 October 2025.

The next evening I went to Ashurst Lake (southeast of Flagstaff) to try and capture the comet with reflections in the water. This time I shot with a wide angle lens (35mm) to get the evening sky with the lake.

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) and Ashurst Lake. The San Francisco Peaks can be seen to the right.
Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) and Ashurst Lake. The San Francisco Peaks can be seen to the right.

A few nights later I was in Sedona and shot this image from the Cultural Park on the west side of town. There was a lot of green airglow present low in the sky. Also, the dome of light in the center of the image is from Las Vegas — 200 miles away.

Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) from Sedona. (35 mm; 24 October 2025.
Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) from Sedona. (35 mm; 24 October 2025.
Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) from Mormon Lake overlook (180 mm, 20 October 2025).
Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) from Mormon Lake overlook (180 mm, 20 October 2025).

It was time for the big lens — the Nikon 200–500mm lens at full telephoto. These were taken at Upper Lake Mary. The focus is just a bit soft owing to operator error but it still shows a lot of interesting detail in the tail.

Comet C.2025 A6 (Lemmon) on 30 October 2025.
Comet C.2025 A6 (Lemmon) on 30 October 2025.
A black and white negative image of the comet. This format shows a lot of detail.
A black and white negative image of the comet. This format shows a lot of detail.

The moon is nearly full right now. I’ll wait about a week until the skies are very dark again and shoot more images of the comet before it fades away.

 

 

Milky Way Closeup

Most of my Milky Way photographs are shot using a wide-angle (24 or 28 mm focal length), or ultra-wide-angle lens (16 mm focal length). These create an image that shows a large portion of the Milky Way. But sometimes it’s fun to zoom in a bit and focus (no pun intended) on a much smaller section of the sky.

Milky Way.
Milky Way.

A few days after the full Moon provided a great opportunity to do this. The Moon would not rise until about an hour after astronomical twilight ended and, more importantly, there were very clear skies.

I used a Nikon D750 body with a Nikon 85mm f/1.8 lens for this session. This is designed to be a portrait lens but I find it makes a pretty good astrophotography lens as well because of the excellent light-gathering f/1.8 aperture and the corner-to-corner sharpness resulting in nice round stars. At least, that is, when I get sharp focus and accurate tracking.

I shot 10 images of 120 seconds exposure time and used Long Exposure Noise Reduction (LENR). I was unable to use the 10th exposure because the sky was already getting brighter even though the Moon was still below the horizon. The result was 9×120 seconds or 18 minutes of light gathering.

I have several different applications (both Mac and Windows) for star stacking and alignment and chose to use Starry Sky Stacker this time with good results. Once I had the stack completed I used rnc-color-stretch for histogram stretching with final postprocessing done in Lightroom 6/Photoshop CS6.

Milky Way with annotations.
Milky Way with annotations.

This is the final result. I think the colors might be a bit too saturated—but I don’t dislike the result. Artistic license invoked here.